EdTechTalk#10 - August 7, 2005

EdTechTalk #10August 7, 2005
EdTechTalk returns after a one week hiatus with an overview of open source offerings online and a brief intro into the world of educational podcasting.Download mp3(17.4MB, 43:38)

SHOW NOTES BELOW

OpenSource Links

Skype - Skype is a free online telephone system. You can download it at skype.com and then communicate with over 40 million skype members from around the world with digital quality sound. Check out this article from business week. http://skype.com/ Skype isnâ€™t technically open source, but it is free. It allows for free online communication between two or more computers through audio and text. Itâ€™s brother application, Vskype - http://vskype.com/ allows for video communication and also the sharing (view) of another persons screen.

Gizmo â€“ http://www.gizmoproject.com/ is the open source younger brother of above. Keep an eye on it, over the next 6 months it may pass skype in usability.

Xenu â€“ http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html# Xenu is link checking software and should be run every couple of weeks to ensure that all the links on the website are active and not sending students off into never never land.

Online spell checker - http://www.a2solutions.co.uk/spell/spellcheck.php this is probably my favorite. It will only do one page at a time however. Still not a great solution, but will pick out the spelling mistakes for you and offer you solutionsâ€¦ that you then have to go back and input yourself. Best to have two windows open for this.

Elgg â€“ https://sourceforge.net/projects/elgg/ to download
http://elgg.net/ to try
Elgg is open source e-portfolio and communication software. Students can use it for blogging and for connecting to each other in many, many ways. The software is still at version 0.2 but at the price, free, it is the most promising of its kind on the internet.

Moodle â€“ http://moodle.org In case the project goes into remission, this is the best open source course management system on the market. It comes at no cost to you, and can be learned quite quickly even by people with very limited technical ability.

Feedreader - http://www.feedreader.com/ A decent free rss program, stripped down and simple. Only drawback is the feeds pre-installed. But they are easily deleted and do offer a sampling of the kinds of things you can subscribe to.

Open Office Org - http://www.openoffice.org/ this is probably the best wordprocessing program on the market... all things considered. It can be used on win mac or linux and offers a great bridge between those operating systems. and it's free (but you might want to donate, as with any of these programs).

Mandrake and Open SUSE - operating systems that include many of the above items, pretty much all you need. Takes a little more work to make the transition, but it may be almost as easy see this article http://os.newsforge.com/os/05/08/05/1456242.shtml.

Teach42.com - "provides insight into current trends, educational issues and all the latest innovations that can be incorporated into an educational environment". Many useful links in Teach42 Bloglines . Edtechtalk#10 continued a clip from the July 21 Teach42 show talking to people at Building Learning Communities 2005

Techsavvyed.net - blog, not a podcast, but contains very useful info and commentary on EdTech by "a community of educators dedicated to sharing and discovering ways for students to use technology in a practical way to create new knowledge, communicate and collaborate across long distances, and enhance learning"

Who's online

There are currently 0 users and 5 guests online.

Do you have your EdTechTalk stuff yet? Did you know there are T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, buttons, magnets, and tote bags available? They're all based on Wordle interpretations of the EdTechTalk Delicious tags.

What are you waiting for? These are limited edition items. Shop now and avoid the rush!